romano holiday
by patriciaselina
Summary: Human AU based on the movie "Roman Holiday". A Spanish princess. A money-hungry Italian reporter. Twenty-four hours. Surely they won't cross paths ever again? Surely this won't end in love? One-shot. Fan-made names and OCs used. RomanoxOCPhili


The monetary amount is big enough for him to buy a villa with its own tomato plantation. Or maybe big enough for him to grab his sister out of that godforsaken apartment and fly to some obscure African beach, away from any and all potato bastards in existence. Or maybe enough for that Ferrari he always lusted for behind the showroom windows.

Well, maybe it's not that large an amount, but it's large enough for him to get _la famiglia_ to truss and gag Ludwig Beilschmidt faster than one could say "_buono_".

"That kind of story...with Her Highness..." his heart skips a beat, mentally imagining the smell of cold cash on his hands. "...how much would it cost?"

Alfred - his boss' carefree son - smiles at him with the full force of his ocean eyes, and Lovino's heart - or something quite resembling it, at least - is gone for good.

"Fifty thousand American dollars."

* * *

><p><em>roman holiday. vacaciones en roma. vacanze romane. isang bakasyon sa roma.<br>hetalia (c) hidekaz himaruya  
>oc!piri (mais), oc!mexico (alejandro) (c) damagectrl. vivalalixi.<br>roman holiday (c) paramount pictures.  
>This is a work of fiction and any and all resemblance to real countries, armed forces, royal families or people are purely coincidental.<em>

* * *

><p>In the history of royal families, there is no one who has appealed to the common citizen as much as the late English Princess Diana. However, if the people lining the streets of the European highways are any indication, Spain's Princess Maria Isabella could hold a candle to the late beloved "Princess Di".<p>

Princess Maria, like all of the Spanish King's daughters, is a petite, tan-skinned girl with long dark hair, a well-proportioned body, and a personality just as pretty as her face. She is rich, and is good friends with all the princes and princesses and emirs the world could offer; but like any well-mannered noble she is also always ready to help the poor, to give them what they need.

Like all the Spanish princesses, however, Maria's life only revolved around the mansion her family fondly calls "_el palacio_", the odd charity ball or event, and nowhere else. However, since her brother, the former Crown Prince Alejandro, had named her as heir to the Spanish throne two weeks ago (effectively making her first in line to the throne - not that anyone minded, but King Antonio was worried about his eldest son putting his _hija_in such a "compromising" position), all that has changed.

The now Crown Princess Maria waves a hand to all the people trailing her regal convoy; she was in Rome at last, her father's hometown. Her tour of goodwill as the new heiress spans three capitals - London, Amsterdam, and now, the Eternal City. Smiling demurely, the little princess showed no sign of any internal strain of the week's countless public appearances. So everybody thought that she was just a pretty little noble content with her sheltered life.

Or at least that's what everybody thought she felt. Because nobody knew that in the next twenty-four hours, everything is about to change forever, for better or for worse.

* * *

><p>The once-dignified Spanish princess ours herself into a bed whose number of thread counts probably exceeded an average household's yearly income and wails into one of her goose-feather pillows.<p>

"Your Highness, please stop making that incessant noise." The Countess was only a few years older than her, but she had already been assuming the position of the Princess' caretaker since she was old enough to walk, and was also the only one she treated as her best friend. She sets a plate of cookies and a glass of milk on the nightstand, and brushes off her long dark hair behind her as she sits down at the foot of the bed. "And to answer your question, I do think all your nightdresses are pretty."

Maria fingers the smooth silk of the aforementioned nightgown and frowns. "They make me look like a seventeenth-century relic."

The other girl sighs, picks up a jewel-encrusted hairbrush, and settles herself with running it through the royal's long, dark hair. "There are a lot of young ladies who'd just die to have your life, Princess." She smiles wistfully, maybe about some inside story she vowed never to tell. "It is perfect, after all."

"Anna." The Countess' eyes widen as the forlorn Princess not only used her English name (without the title, no less, her tutors would've gone into a rage!) but also because she chose to say her next words.

"Anna, I want to wear pajamas."

"Your Highness," the young countess holds a hand to her breast, eyes widened in shock. "Are you saying that you are making such a big fuss about this because...you want to wear pajamas?"

"Just the top part!" She smiles her breezy sunshine smile, and Countess Anh Linh looks at her as if Princess Maria said that she'd just wanted to destroy her father's royal tomato garden. "Don't look at me like that, Anna. Do you know that there are people who sleep wearing nothing at all?"

(Case in point: Countess Anh Linh's adoptive older brother.)

* * *

><p>Money was the only thing on his mind these days.<p>

Well, money, and his scatterbrained little sister - even if she had pleaded with him not to kill the potato-bastard she had the gall to call her "boyfriend", and had pleaded with him not to contact their grandfather's underlings for the same purpose. If it wasn't for his insistence that her life would be better without the German whose apartment she lived in (and, on an unrelated note, the rising cost of Armani, Gucci, and Italian designer goods in general), Lovino would have never left the safety of his sniper's nest above the Beilschmidt residence. (That nobody knew about.)

He didn't really know which ached more - that he was in the noisy streets of Rome where he used to make a fool of himself in front of his grandfather, or that his idiot sister was left in the house of that Ludwig he reviled.

But now there was nothing he could do about it, or about anything, really; and that was what led him being in this condition - as an overworked journalist for an English newspaper; a solitary person living in a relatively well-kept apartment set for one...A frustrated workaholic who now owed _Signorina_Gisela a rather sizable amount of euros for her extensive blackmailing skills.

As a young man walking down a dark street seeing a young lady snoozing lazily on a Roman park bench.

The girl's long dark hair spread out behind her on the cold, hard marble; the intricate Victorian lace on her blouse an indicator of her apparent wealth. Her quiet snoring mixed in with the frosty night air, and from where he stood Lovino could smell a faint hint of expensive perfume.

Despite what his grandfather says about him being "too vulgar", he still believes in the story of the Good Samaritan, and this is what he keeps in mind as he carries the girl on his back, cursing all the way home.

* * *

><p>The tranquilizer wears off for one bleary moment, and behind the sickly sweet haze the Princess begins to remember what exactly led to her escape.<p>

The Ambassador - a charming but hot-tempered young lady, a family friend - had stopped by her bedchambers to drop off her schedule for the next day. Countess Anh Linh had been enumerating her various royal duties, everything planned from her hair style to her stuffy regal undergarments (who wore breeches in the twentieth century, after all?).

_Alto!_- she could remember seeing herself scream, seeing rather than hearing the frenzied jumble of words the erupted from the palace staff's overreaction to the young Princess's "temper tantrum".

Maria saw the syringe plunge into one of the veins of her arm like it was in slow motion. She could remember being in a state of temporary calm, remember spouting off promises she had to do, but at the moment had no intention of doing. A click, and the lights were off; Anh Linh closes the door - she could see the worried glance she throws her way, and her distracting plait of long black hair swishing past her full, knee-length skirt, like the tail of the beloved horse she had at home, the one she called Alejandro.

She also remembers, more than anything, opening the windows as far as she could reach, and the exhilarating feeling of being like a baby bird spreading her wings for the first time.

She remembers how fun it seemed sneaking in the back of an unsuspecting vehicle - the one that supplied her delicious pizza every day, she recalls - and how proud she felt when she wasn't caught. She remembers how free she felt wandering around in the dark Roman streets, unnoticed and unfamiliar; not worth a second look, just a random girl walking around.

The last things she remember go a little fuzzy around the edges, though - she remembers how cold the marble park bench felt against her skin, and thinking how she actually preferred it to her gigantic fluffy bed at home; and she remembers somebody carefully taking her in his arms, like the sleeping beauty in all those American movies.

* * *

><p>The lights are on, and the click of the switch gives Princess Maria just enough wherewithal to register that she was bouncing on someone else's bed, like a cannonball thrown on a trampoline.<p>

"Oh," she sits up, nodding to what her blurry eyes estimated to be the position of a dark-haired blurry tan lump by her bedside. "G'day."

"So you're awake, I'll take you home now," Lovino sighs, his mumbles lost on another billowing cloud of cigarette smoke. "Your parents would be so worried by now miss...now, where did you say you lived?"

"_Yo vivo en…el palacio._"

There is an awkward silence in the room as the Italian lights another cigarette, not knowing how exactly to proceed. _El palacio_, the palace. A pretty girl she may be...but rather knocked up in the head, if his opinion was of any importance in the matter. Curse his rotten luck.

"Fine," he throws a pair of pajamas her direction. "Change into that. You're sleeping on the couch tonight,_principessa_."

Two blinks, and the girl realizes just what the cornflower blue lump of fabric was. Her face lights up in a beatific smile, which confuses Lovino since he hadn't seen anyone so excited about pajamas since...well, forever. "Pajamas! I'm sleeping in pajamas today...just so lovely, sir, really lovely!"

First he noticed the rich-looking girl sleeping like a drunk on the sidewalk, then he actually had the gall to carry the unknown female back to his apartment, and now he was offering the aforementioned unknown girl his own pajamas - maybe his grandfather had been right and really needed to "get his head examined". It should have been no surprise to him, though, that the girl wanted to sleep on his bed; Lovino Vargas was a man people could call relatively chivalrous, but he was not that chivalrous, so the forlorn look the girl shot him when he refused shouldn't have hurt that much.

He was about to leave the room, leave the girl to change into his pajamas, when she suddenly sat up straight in bed and asked for one last request:

"Will you help me get undressed, please?"

Lovino chose this moment to thank the fact that the girl was still semi-delirious and thus was ignorant to his red-stained cheeks. He took the bottle of wine he had been carefully ignoring since he went home (it wasn't prudent of him to be drinking around the girl, anyway; she looked mature for her age, but with her petite frame, she couldn't have been a day older than seventeen) and opened it, pouring himself a glass. He forgot all sense of common decency and downed it all, not caring for the bouquets and legs and stuff that he previously enjoyed. All that was in his head was that this girl - this unknown girl had just asked him to take off her clothes for her, if he so willingly pleased, and this girl was either a trollop or a _real_princess and either way, he didn't know what to think.

"You...you do that yourself." _You're not five years old anymore, idiot_, he added in his mind. "What matters is that you sleep on the couch. Not on the bed...on the couch. Just on the couch. If you've got that, I'll go now."

* * *

><p>She didn't follow his instructions, and was now lying on the Italian's bed with a serene smile on her face.<p>

This was the first time he'd ever seen her up close - he could see her clearly now, her long, fluttering eyelashes with their tips touching her tanned cheeks, flushed pink from the cold. Her hair spread out like dark seaweed on her pillow; he rubbed some of it between his fingers, it was soft - softer than his little sister's light brown locks ever would have been. Her full pink lips opened and closed in her sleep, as if mumbling in her dream; Lovino found himself thinking of how pleasant it may be to have those lips against his, and how sweet they might taste.

Lovino catches fistfuls of his own hair in his hands and pulls, grunting silently. He never thought of himself as somebody who'd think of a girl - a harmless, innocent girl who didn't even know what pajamas were - that way.

All uncouth thoughts of her set aside, her smile was one of the things he decided he liked the most about her. Her smile was so beautiful that it almost made him give up the bed - but the side of him whose back ached from carrying her overwhelmed the chivalrous side, and he feels only a twinge of guilt when he pours her carefully over the couch.

His efforts were all wasted, though - somehow, the tranquilizer-addled Princess gets out of "bed", blindly making her way to the king-size mattress in the middle of the loft, lying in the warm space between Lovino and the heater.

Somewhere in the middle of dreams, Lovino muses how this night was the best sleep he's ever had.

* * *

><p>He wakes up without the help of the goddamned alarm clock, and all he could think of as he hurries to the shower, grabs the nearest set of presentable clothes, and take his bag is -<p>

It is only when he is already running by the pavement that he remembers the unknown girl in his apartment, snoozing primly on his pillow without a care in the world - wait, on his pillow? _That little..._

However, all thought of how he had actually shared his bed with a girl (despite without any malice whatsoever) and how he still didn't know the girl's name, would have to wait until after everything, after Lovino will inevitably get chewed out by his boss for being late for his interview with the Spanish princess that the newspaper had been working hard on getting to interview.

True enough, his boss - the infamous Arthur Kirkland - greets him when he arrives with a smirk. "And to what occurrence do I owe your being late today, Vargas? Cat eat your shoes again? Or your bloody alarm clock? Why didn't it eat your worthless head while it was at it?" The Englishman sighed, silently lamenting about the sorry state of the economy and how it was such a waste supporting such an equally sorry group of individuals. "Tell me why you didn't show up to interview the Princess."

"I just came from the interview," Lovino says in reply, momentarily thinking it quite witty of him, and then suddenly gasping as he just realized what he had said and as his boss slaps a piece of paper on his table with a tone of being unimpressed by his blatant lie.

The paper read:

_Princess Maria Isabella was suddenly taken ill three o'clock this morning and as of this moment, could not attend to any of her other scheduled appointments. The Spanish Embassy thanks everybody for their understanding in the face of this grievous undertaking..._"Now," Arthur looks at him with that scary emerald glare he'd perfected all these years. "...tell me where you were again, Vargas?" After Lovino's eyes snapped to the table for a momentary distraction, Arthur angrily huffs and tells his son - when did he get here, Lovino thought - that he'd be out for a smoke.

It is when he actually gets a good look at the girl in the paper that his breath catches in his throat, and he thinks that maybe this was what that guy Archimedes thought when he was in the bathtub before he said "Eureka!". Lovino looks at the American making paper airplanes in front of him, and asks, "Hey, how much...how much do you think a real interview with the Princess be worth?"

The blond at the table scoffs and laughs at him. "Why would you care anyway? She's the Spanish Princess, and you've got just about as much chance of talking to her as, say, a butcher-"

"I know, I know, I know, but what if-" Lovino could feel his heartbeat quickening, see a million thoughts pass through his mind at once. "What if I did? How much would you think that'd cost?"

"You know those Princesses." The American journalist peeks through one of his airplanes, testing the folds. "All they talk about is world issues and all those other boring stuff my father calls 'news'. One of those would be about, oh, since this is one of Carriedo's kids, twenty five hundred dollars. But if she spoke about, like, typical girl stuff, like clothes and stuff, it would cost more...about, in her case, ten thousand."

"No, no, it's not just that..." Lovino racks his brain for an explanation, finding some way to explain what he meant. "I mean not just her views on petty things like clothes or normal stuff like politics; I mean what she thinks about-about everything! Just imagine it. Her Highness' most kept secrets, thoughts and yearnings revealed to yours truly in an exclusive tell-all interview." The other man's jaw makes an audible sound as it drops; Lovino smirks. "Don't want it? I didn't think you would..."

"Dad would! I would! Now tell me, Vargas, is there a love angle to this story?"

The Italian tries hard not to think about how he thought of kissing her and almost doing so the night before, but it's so hard not to, to remember the feeling of her arms around him as she slept peacefully. The girl was so innocent, and it would be no trick for him to charm her over to the story he wanted her to make. "Precisely."

The boss' son asks him if he could provide pictures to his story; Lovino remembers Gisela, and how this might be his chance to pay all his debts to the Belgian photographer. He nods, making a mental note to call Gisela before he meets the girl again.

The monetary amount, after all, is big enough for him to buy a villa with its own tomato plantation. Or maybe big enough for him to grab his sister out of that godforsaken apartment and fly to some obscure African beach, away from any and all potato bastards in existence. Or maybe enough for that Ferrari he always lusted for behind the showroom windows.

Well, maybe it's not that large an amount, but it's large enough for him to get _la famiglia_ to truss and gag Ludwig Beilschmidt faster than one could say "_buono_".

"That kind of story...with Her Highness..." his heart skips a beat, mentally imagining the smell of cold cash on his hands. "...how much would it cost?"

Alfred - his boss' carefree son - smiles at him with the full force of his ocean eyes, and Lovino's heart - or something quite resembling it, at least - is gone for good.

"Fifty thousand American dollars."

* * *

><p>When he gets home the girl is already awake, sitting up straight on his bed just like a life-sized porcelain doll.<p>

"Oh, excuse me, sir -" she reaches out her hand to him, reaching, it seems, for something that isn't there. "I seem to have made a mistake-numerous mistakes, really…but before that, would you be so kind to tell me where I am?"

"This, _bella_, is what I call my apartment." It was getting easier to talk to her now, now that he had a part to play and a mission to fulfill. "Where you have spent the last few hours, ah, sleeping rather nicely, if I may say."

"Did you-" He finds it somewhat endearing that the girl raises her arms up to her well-developed chest like a shield as some unwelcome thought flashes through her mind. "Did you take me here by force, sir?"

He remembers how soundly she slept on the park bench last night, and how someone else might have taken her and did some uncouth things on her or some other if he didn't whisk her away. "No, _bella_, it's not like that. It's – how can I say it, purely for your best interest, and who knows what might have transpired if I just left you there on the street, alone?"

She takes a moment to mull over this, and after some beats of silence extends her arm to him in greeting. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mister-?"

He takes her hand and shakes it eagerly; _so this is how it feels to shake hands with a princess_. "Vargas, Lovino Vargas. And you are Miss-"

"You-" she smiles, at some inside joke that he probably wouldn't get in a hundred years. "You can call me Bella."

* * *

><p>Gisela arrives at their meeting place, smiling cheerily at the Italian smirking in the patisserie.<p>

"Why, I never thought you'd be contacting me this soon, _mon cher_," She takes this unguarded moment of his to pinch his cheek; after all these years, it's still that smooth and stretchable. "With you being so quiet like this, you won't be calling your childhood friend like that unless you've finally agreed on the, ah, terms we've agreed on, or…"

"Or if I got a scoop I know you can't refuse." He smiles; ever since they were four and she picked up a camera, they were close enough to finish each other's sentences with a vigor that newlyweds could dream of. "Front-page stuff. It would either change what the world thinks about nobles, or it could change how it thinks about me, and media in general. Either way, it's big. I need pictures-" He motions to the Belgian's oversized glasses; she smiles. "And I also need cash."

* * *

><p>She had a hard time separating herself from the hairdresser, though she couldn't say that she didn't enjoy <em>Signor<em> Feliciano's adorable attempts at flirtation. After telling him that she wanted to cut off all those five years of hair to make herself "unrecognizable" (an act that would have made her father wring out _his_ hair, in turn), the Italian didn't seem to want to free himself of her presence just yet, and oh, there was a dance somewhere in Rome this evening, and would _la bella signorina_reserve a dance for him? And she smiled and said that yes, she should.

It was a normal day in the Eternal City, a place where nothing stops and nothing dies, a place where every woman gets called 'beautiful' on an hourly basis; a day that shouldn't be in the annals of history or something, but it was important to Maria because…it was her first day of freedom. She was, right now, as free as the birds idly pecking on the bottom of the fountains, not knowing they were already pecking on forgotten coins. Using the spare change that _Signor_ Lovino had oh-so kindly given her before she left his house, she was able to get her hair cut in a length that her father would have chastised her for having, and a darling little cone of _gelato_, and the nice man who sold flowers gave her one because she was 'cute'. To her, things seemed like they were finally looking up, for once.

"_Signorina_ Bella!" A familiar voice calls out to her from the other side of the fountain; it is Lovino, the kind man who took care of her that morning, and she smiles. Only he, after all, knew her by that name. (But then again, all Italian men seemed to call her '_bella_', even when they didn't know her name.) "I'm glad I met you again…You got your hair cut, Bella?"

The princess smiles and cups the ends where her hair touched her nape, and smiled. "It was refreshing. No one wanted me to get my hair cut before…but, well, they can't do anything about that now, could they?" The smile she gave him glittered like the sun, and Lovino suddenly berates himself for caring. It was she who was supposed to fall for his trap, not the other way around.

They walk around aimlessly for a while then, and Maria tells the Italian about her life – or at least an elaborately crafted lie that might have resembled her life, in some alternate universe or so, since "running away from school" was a common thing for normal heiresses in boarding schools to do these days; "running away from my duties" was not a common thing for a princess, much less for the Spanish Crown Princess, to do.

"Why did you run, _Signorina_? Did the teachers have anything to do with it?" Lovino held a cup of _gelato_in his hand; it was pistachio this time, he offered her a spoonful and pushed it past her lips. A satisfied sigh showed him that yes, she did like it. "After all, a lass – especially one pretty little lass like you – doesn't just run away for nothing."

"It was only supposed to be for an hour or two," she says apologetically. Why, Anna and all the others would be so worried about her now, and her father – if her father knew about this, he might have declared war on Rome for simply, well, existing. "But they put something in me that made me sleep – you saw that, right? When you carried me to your room, I might have been saying terribly nonsensical things, I apologize – and now I should go back now, I think."

Well, that was too bad then, Lovino thought, since he wasn't going to let his story go just yet. "Why don't you take your time, _princesa_?" Maria gulped since she thought he knew her secret already, but when asked, he told her it was just because she ordered him to undress her the night before, and she blushed deeply. "Take the day off. Relax. Rome isn't something that you can just experience in a few measly hours."

"That would be so wonderful," Maria sighed. "And-and I'd be able to do all the things I've always wanted to do! Like eat _gelato_all day – I just love that pistachio one, by the way, utterly delicious – and sit in a sidewalk café, and window-shop, and just look around; my father's always been telling me how pretty Rome was, anyway…It sounds so ordinary to you, now doesn't it?"

He knew, right about then, what the right thing was for him to do. It was to tell her the truth, tell her to go home and never come back, lest there be more uncouth men like him using innocent girls like her for their own personal sakes, and forget he ever laid eyes on her or brought her into his apartment after she ran away. But there was something stopping him – and at this moment he didn't know if it was either the American dollars that could pay for a restraining order against his little sister's boyfriend, or the wistful look in Princess Maria Isabella's eyes when she told him, as he'd expected, just what she really wanted in life.

So he takes her hand and leads her to the café, where Gisela is waiting with her trusty hidden camera-glasses, because everything is scripted, after all; but at that moment, even if he didn't want to admit it to himself, it was because all he wanted was to wipe the sadness from the Princess' – Bella's – eyes.

* * *

><p>They are eating pasta for lunch when Gisela, true to form, asks 'Bella' about her father's work.<p>

"My father is…working in the public relations industry, one could say that." She twirls the fettuccini around the tines of the fork, and couldn't stop herself from thinking about how pretty everything was, even when she had always been eating in places which this café could only dream of holding a candle to. "He's been doing it for about forty years or so now, I think."

Her hair is in her eyes for the nth time while they're having lunch, and so Lovino leaves them for a moment. He returns a few minutes later with a little hairclip – it is in the shape of a flower, a little white one, and it clashes nicely with Maria's hair when he clips it on, grunting something about how it made him tried watching her bat her hair about. She flushes a deep red as she thanks him.

"Wow, that's nice, Bella – forty years." Gisela smiles at her from across the table, savoring the expensive champagne that the brunette unconsciously ordered. Lovino was so going to pay for this, dragging her precious money in the equation – and to think that he was planning to fool such a lovely girl, too. "My younger brother never cared much about jobs. I think the most he's held on to one was, ah, maybe two weeks? But for your father to keep on doing that for forty years – now that's drive." A secret smirk to Lovino behind her wine flute, and she adds; "He must really love his job."

"I'd be the one to say, as his daughter, that that isn't the case. I heard him complain about it many times now;" She sighed, as if she really was a runaway student talking about her father complaining about his job, not a Princess defying truckloads of rules about royal secrets. "My elder brother – I told you already that this was sort of a…family business, yes? He doesn't care for this kind of job either, but he's the heir, so he has no choice. Or at least he wasn't supposed to have one. Until he told father to choose me." Maria smiles a wry little smirk at them over the table. "And now it's I who has no choice."

And now it is her who asks Lovino about his line of work, and now it is his turn to make some sort of elaborate lie. "I, err, I sell things." Gisela giggles, and Lovino chokes and sputters on his wine. "…ehrm, I sell dangerous-well yes, dangerous things. Fertilizers, pesticides, those kinds of stuff…they pay well, but like I told you, it's a pretty…dangerous job."

The Belgian lights a cigarette, and sees the longing look on Maria's face. "Would you want one, Bella? …But you don't look a day older than sixteen to me, so maybe I shouldn't offer?"

The Princess takes the little stick her father once called "the tool of the devil" from Gisela's hands, and smiles. "Don't say that. If you really need to know, I just turned eighteen this June." Lovino lights the end with his heavy, metal lighter – it's really pretty, and he said it was a gift from his little sister, many years ago. The tip comes to life instantly, and Maria blows a puff of smoke daintily.

"Why, would you look at that," She looks dreamily at the cigarette, and smiles. "My first cigarette."

(Gisela rests her face in her hands, and tugs on her glasses. Maria doesn't know that the Belgian is actually taking pictures of her that very moment.)

* * *

><p>The blond grunts as he scours yet another piece of the city for the Princess. She wasn't helping with anything with this little disappearing act she was doing; he didn't enjoy this job, but in order to support his little lily, to come home to her…he had to.<p>

Vash motions for his men to look the other way, not seeing or noticing the petite dark-haired girl laughing merrily in a sidewalk café – the woman he (they) were all looking for.

* * *

><p>Lovino suddenly found himself regretting letting her drive.<p>

First and foremost, he knew that 'Bella' was actually a royal, and royals had no use for drivers' licenses. Second of all, he knew that the girl, living a sheltered, heavily guarded life, had no knowledge of basic traffic laws – and no need to follow them. So it shouldn't have surprised them that the _polizia_was about to arrest them both for her driving them across the Spanish Steps and nearly running over an old lady.

"We're…getting married." Actually, they weren't, but at that moment he sort of wished that was the case. "Going to the Coliseum to get married on a scooter." It was a weird and crazy alibi, something that even he himself wouldn't have believed in; but the police simply laughed and let them go, because "love does things like that, _signor_."

As she finally relented and allowed him to take the reins, she slung her arms around his shoulders, as if what Lovino had told the police really was true and they were really childhood sweethearts about to wed. "I'm such a good liar, _si_?"

He allows himself to smile, feeling her warmth so close to him and her heart beating against his back. "Of course." Lovino takes one hand off the handlebars, covering both her hands in his own, unknowingly pressing them against his own heart. "The best I've ever met."

* * *

><p>"<em>La Bocca della Verita<em>," Lovino mumbles. "The Mouth of Truth, my dear Bella – people say that this little thing, right here, cuts off the hands of liars." He smirks at her, and Maria winces as she feels her heart skip a beat – not now, not with him, oh no what trouble has she gotten herself in – as he continues on. "Would you like to take your chance with it?"

"No…sorry to say, Lovino, I would rather not."

"Well, then it's my turn then." Lovino inserts his hand in the sculpture's mouth, and screams. "OWWWWWWWWWWWW! DAMMIT, IT BIT ME!" He shows her his handless arm, and she shrieks – he remembers, for a moment, those tales his grandfather once told him about those beautiful banshees. It is only when she becomes truly worried about him that his hand 'suddenly' pops out of his sleeve, and Maria's breathing grows even again, before she has the presence of mind to actually be a bit annoyed at him for lying to her like that.

* * *

><p>"This wall, or so they say, apparently grants miracles." Lovino skims his hand past the numerous engravings on the otherwise-plain wall. "A guy was stuck here with his four kids in an air raid – I don't remember which World War it was, though. He prayed that he and his children all get out of here unscathed. Bombs landed here," The Italian motioned to the area around him, "but no one was hurt. His was the first of the plaques, and after that it's become sort of a shrine. People wish, and when their wish gets granted, they put up one of these little plaques."<p>

"Lovely story that is," Maria smiles, and runs a hand over the engravings, reading some of them in the process. "_…he fell in love with me too, now we are married…I bought the house I've always wanted for my family…my daughter got out of that horrendous relationship…_" A sad smile graces her face, and at that moment Lovino is not just a journalist intent on wringing out every secret he could from this naïve royal, but…something else, entirely, he just isn't sure what. "It must be nice, for people to have things like this. Things they can wish on and give them hope that what they want will happen."

"You wished too, didn't you?" She nods, and he smiles slyly, showing rows of even white teeth. "Tell me, what is it?"

Maria regally inclines her head, and then murmurs a sound of refusal, and when Lovino insists on wanting to know she says "It doesn't matter; besides, I don't think anything in the world could make it happen, though."

The brunet makes his own wish unconsciously and blanches. He'd never thought of himself as that sort of man, after all; they've only known each other for a few hours, why did his heart beat when she smiled and why did it skip a beat when she said his name? The name she used for herself…fit her, he realized; because he thought that even if she didn't call herself 'Bella' he would still call her that, since she was nothing short of beautiful.

_I wish time would stop for us._

Neither of them knew that they were wishing the exact same thing.

* * *

><p>"The dance ends at midnight," she says breezily, in his arms at last as they glide gracefully along the dance floor. "Then I'll turn into a pumpkin and drive away in my glass slipper."<p>

"And that will end the fairytale, I presume?" Lovino didn't know what exactly led to this, now – to him escorting 'Bella' to the on a barge down by _Sant' Angelo_ on the Tiber River, because of some _Signor_Feliciano's invitation, apparently – and nor did he care. What mattered most to him now was that her warm hand was in his, and he can feel her heart beating against his chest, and his other hand encircled her slim waist. "That's such a waste."

Gisela had left them a moment ago, excusing herself by way of her little brother making a mess of his apartment again; in fact she was heading off to her darkroom, in order to develop the pictures that would prove how the Spanish Crown Princess was not actually sick, but run away from the Embassy to walk around Rome to do things that the Spanish King would castrate her for. (The King Antonio was known, after all, to be such an overreactor.)

The journalist looked at her smiling face and, for the nth time, felt something sort of like pity twist in his gut. He was not supposed to feel this way, since he was a journalist, purveyor of the truth, and in order to ease out the truth he had to tell lies. But it took him quite a while to realize just why he seemed to lose the drive to continue fooling this pretty young royal with the charming brown eyes and full pink lips.

He was in love with her.

He, Lovino Vargas, man who didn't care much about women, was in love with Princess Maria Isabella, the girl who knew naught about the world. They had only known each other for hours now, but he knew then and there, that like the little sister he once called an 'idiot' when she gave up everything to be with her boyfriend, if she wanted him to run away with her he would have agreed right then and there. He knew, then, that what he felt for her was nothing short of love.

"A sidewalk café, _gelato_all day, beautiful sights, a motorcycle ride…and now this dance." Maria smiles at him, and he could feel her heartbeat growing irregular as she speaks. "We've spent the day doing things I've always wanted to do…what I want to know, though, is why."

Of course he already knew the answer to that; but "I was originally supposed to trick your deepest darkest secrets from you and put them on paper to cause some sort of political upheaval" doesn't quite roll off the tongue as smoothly as he wished it would, and nor did it become any better if he said those words and ended them with "that's what I planned to do, but then I fell in love with you".

He is saved from saying a reply he hadn't really thought about when a young brunet with a breezy smile and a haircurl quite resembling his own – this must be _Signor_Feliciano, he thinks – takes Maria's hand and whisks her away.

(Leading him to feel something that he only felt when his grandfather always favored little Chiara over him, that little idiot – oh wait, this was what they call 'jealousy', wasn't it? When he felt like he wanted to wring that man's neck and throw him over the barge-)

* * *

><p>He didn't have much time to think, however, since a group of plain-clothes men suddenly arrived, threw Feliciano roughly to the side, and took the Princess' hands. The open fear in her eyes reminded him that these men had every right to be doing this.<p>

They were, after all, the royal guards.

Maria wouldn't go down without a fight, however, and it didn't come off as a surprise to him. She took a bottle from a nearby table and smirked as she aimed for one of the guard's head and introduced one end to the other; a crack sounding her success. She grabbed the guitar from an unsuspecting guitarist and smashed it into another guard's blond head.

A shorter man, with blond hair and cold green eyes, had managed to take a hold on her, and was now grasping her hands in both of his.

"No! I said let me go, please! Just-just let me go!"

"The King would have none of that, Prin-"

Vash didn't get to finish his sentence, though, since two arms suddenly shot out from nowhere, encircling the Princess in the process, and the man to whom those arms belonged suddenly ran like the wind, holding Maria close as he jumped off the barge, to the cold, dark river waters.

* * *

><p>She wakes up and the first thing she sees is his triumphant face.<p>

"So you're finally awake, _addormentato bella_." She knew that she should be used to him calling her Bella by now, since that was, after all, the name she chose for herself, but she found out that she could never seem to get used to him calling her beautiful, because her heart did this little somersault every time he did, and it felt nice, but not entirely, since she knew that this was not supposed to be. "Nice little escape we did there, didn't we?"

"It is nice; I think you'd deserve a thunderous round of applause for that." She smiles, a shy little smile she never used around anyone before, since she never felt her heart beat this fast before. "Whatever shall I be without you, Lovino?"

His name on her tongue wakes another one of those urges of his, one of those things he'd always wanted to do since he ever saw her face clearly for the first time, and despite hundreds of years of royal tradition and his knowledge of his own social status and his understanding that right now, this shouldn't be happening, he told everything else to just shut up and be quiet as he took her face in his hands and covers those full lips with his own.

* * *

><p>They walk to his apartment damp this time, hand-in-hand and rapidly falling in love.<p>

Everything was clear to Lovino now: they would have to run away. Change their names or something, go to some place where nobody would recognize them – maybe to the house of that family friend they once had in the Baltic regions? They would not be as rich for the rest of their lives as one of the Princess' minor aides would be in a month, but they would be infinitely happier, and he knew that. They'd be wed in a church, too; a small ceremony in a small cathedral, and Maria'd wear anything and she'll still look like a goddess to him, anyway. Alright, he could come to terms with Felicia and her Ludwig, too, as long as they helped them hide. Maybe they'll have children too, one day – pretty little girls with her eyes and his insistent haircurl. He could see himself growing old side-by-side with this 'Bella', and could see him witness sunset after sunset holding her hand.

She noticed, after a change into drier clothes later, that his apartment, though neat and tidy, didn't have much – like, say, a kitchen. He said that well, life isn't always what one likes, isn't it; and Maria chewed on that, running a towel through her hair as she thought about what to say next.

The radio playing in the background, though, shattered all their thoughts immediately.

_Her Highness, Crown Princess Maria Isabella of Spain, who was struck with a heavy fever last three o'clock this morning, is still sick and her court still refuses any public appearance or any other way of interview…Spaniards everywhere are distraught about their beloved royal's state, and many of them are heading to the nearest cathedral, lighting candles in her name…_

"This day…was tiring, but I got to do a lot of things I never did, and I loved it. I enjoyed…no, you really could say that I loved," She looks at Lovino with sad chocolate eyes, and something in his heart breaks, just a little, but it stung. "That I loved it. All of it."

"I know-I know how to cook. I know how to cook and clean and all those things. I just hadn't – I just wasn't given the chance to do it for anyone."

"That'll be easy, then." The Italian smiles, forcing himself to forget the sad look in the Princess' eyes when she heard the news. Damn that radio. "We'll just have to move into a place with a kitchen, now wouldn't we?"

"Yes, we would." But we couldn't, even if we tried; she thought. No matter what happens, and no matter how happy we'll be, and no matter how much I love you, I would still be running away, and that would be cowardice – you deserve better than a lying coward. "But there's no time to waste. I must go now." She wraps her arms around her, inhaling his scent, sighing and telling herself to cry, not about this of all things…

"Bella, I have to tell you something-"

"No." _I already know what that is, and I do want to hear it._ "No. Don't-don't tell me anything." _Because if you say something, anything, I will throw everything away to be with you._"I have to go. I have to get dressed…and I have to leave."

* * *

><p>Lovino's dilapidated car pulls over in front of the Spanish embassy. With all its beauty and splendor, it was impossible for anyone to believe Bella – no, Maria's claim of it being a prison. Many a lady would kill for her status and her "perfect" royal life, but the man beside her knew that duty was the only thing keeping her here.<p>

She turns to him then, breaking his thoughts with a look so pained it was almost beautiful – hauntingly beautiful, like a Shakespearian tragedy. Maria tugs on the hood on her head, on her shorn hair, and speaks to him in a firm voice.

"I want you to stay in the car," He could see her trembling around the edges of her cool façade, could feel her hesitation. But there was no turning back now, so she continued on. "I'm going to that corner there and turn. Stay in the car and drive away. Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner."

"Just drive away..." Oh God, it hurt her to say this. It was the longest day of her life, and it killed her to have to end it so soon. "And leave me as I leave you."

But she was not Bella Cruz. She could not live a lie.

The Italian chokes on something that might have been a sob and murmurs solemnly. "All right."

"I-I don't know how to say goodbye, I never had to, in the past; and even when I did before I didn't-I didn't feel like this." Tears sprung from her chocolate brown eyes, as if telling him that she wanted him to stop her, to tie her up or something and drive away with her despite any protests she might make. Or as if they were telling him that she loved him; three words that she could never afford to tell him. "I-I don't know what to say…"

He was crying too, it was not a very manly thing but he only realized that he was crying when he kissed her, tasting the cake she ate a few hours ago from her lips and the salt flowing from both their eyes. Lovino inhaled that scent – that smell of jasmines and sunshine that he only knew now but would never, ever forget – that was saying goodbye to him, and he knew that could only dream, and want, and hope, but nothing would ever change.

She breaks off the kiss with hooded eyes and mouths a goodbye on her lips that she knew she would regret for the rest of her life. Maria leaves him there, walks away from the car, and he watches as the dark swallows up the figure of the girl who changed everything for him in just twenty-four hours.

He drives away, tears still buzzing in his eyes, and so he doesn't see the Princess melting in Countess Anh Linh's arms when they meet on the Embassy's back door step, effectively replacing the rage in the older woman's mind with thoughts of how pitiful her little girl had been.

"I loved him, _ate_." Maria cries as she holds on to Anh Linh's sleeves like a lifeline, as if she'd die if she let go. "I loved him very much."

* * *

><p>It is time, then, for her to face the music.<p>

Miss Romana Vargas – how funny was it, she seemed to be crossing paths with a lot of Vargases this day, she thought dryly – also known as the Spanish Ambassador to Italy, had been pacing in her chambers when she arrived, and from the look on her aides' faces she had been going around like that for some time now. When those olive green eyes meet hers, though, she forgets all social standing and her duty to respect the Princess no matter how harebrained she may be, and slaps her full across the face.

"_È stupida ragazza_!" The Italian sneers, she had been worried, since after all, she grew up with the Princess and harbored lots of love for her, but at that moment, it simply felt like too much. "The whole country in a mess because of you, and instead of falling sick like they thought, you were simply running away, gallivanting like some cheap woman!" She places her hands on her hips haughtily, and scoffs. "Have you no dignity whatsoever,_ritardato_?"

The Princess, however would have none of that.

"Your Excellency," She says, rising to her full height, using an authoritative tone that no one ever expected her to have. "I trust you will not find it necessary to use those words again. Were I not completely aware of my duty to my family and my country," Maria wills herself not to remember Lovino and all those happy dreams they shared for those precious moments, but it is hard not to, with her next words; "I would not have come back tonight, or indeed ever again."

The room is silent. Maria's cheek is still red and smarting from Romana's slap seconds earlier, but somehow it seems that the tables were now turned. Any doubt they might have had about the Crown Princess' ability to succeed her majestic father was hastily erased, and nobody could think of anything other than what she had said when questioned about where she was: _I was indisposed. I am better._

Whatever it was that happened to her, it erased all reluctance she had in mind about her royal standing, and that, the people – her people – decided, was enough.

"No milk and cookies tonight," she says with an air of finality as she dismisses everyone in the room, drawing the curtains of her window – that window where it all started in the first place – closed. "That would be all, thank you, Countess."

* * *

><p>Gisela sees Lovino standing sullenly in front of Mister Kirkland, mumbling something she can't identify while the Englishman laughs merrily. She opens the door and invites herself inside, muttering a good morning back to the American smiling appreciatively back at her. It is only then that she understands just what they are talking about:<p>

"Come on, Vargas, tell me this story."

"There is no story, sir, I am sincerely apologizing for that."

"Don't tell me that bull. I know you have one – wait, you knew too much, didn't you? I knew that fifty thousand my boy told you wouldn't be enough. Come, tell me this story, and I'll raise the price to a price you desire…oh, wait, isn't that your photographer friend, Miss Gisela?" The blond man's head inclines gentlemanly in her direction; she preens. "You have the pictures of this little story, don't you?"

Just as she is about to open her mouth to reply, her childhood friend takes the package from her arms and said: "There is no story. The story that you say regards these pictures is not a story…as far as I'm concerned, it is none of your business."

As he takes her hand and whisks her away from the newsroom leaving a very confused duo of Kirklands in their wake (wait, there was this other guy in the desk beside him, his name was Matt…something), Gisela smiles, despite everything.

_So he really is in love._

* * *

><p>She is leaving today, and since she is now 'well', a last public appearance is the least she could offer for the media who had been waiting for her for so long. Princess Maria smiles as she enters the room, pausing momentarily at the sight of two familiar faces in front of the sea of reporters waiting for her. But then again, she thinks, it's no surprise.<p>

She always knew that he never sold chemicals anyway – no, what he sold were things much more precious than that.

And that is the reason why when the reporters ask her questions – the usual political questions that she, as a princess, should be used to by now – she replies with renewed vigor, hoping that in these words, these seemingly impersonal words that were the only way her thoughts should ever be known, he would read into them and see the "I love you" embedded into each and every one of them.

It is his turn to ask, now, and her heart affirms that with a little somersault of its own, but she manages to keep her face smooth and demurely smiling. "Lovino Vargas for The London Times, Your Highness…I, in behalf of my own press service, would like to ask you for your insights on friendship between nations."

(His boss, and not he, was who thought of that question; the Italian winced at how bad it sounded to him, but then again, his own question wasn't sound either – the royal guards would not take a marriage proposal lightly, anyway.)

"I have every faith in it as I have faith in relations between people." She smiles, a dazzling, heartbreaking smile that cameras could only capture but not replicate. It is at that moment that Gisela, at his side, realizes that her friend is not the only one in love, and she felt, without being able to articulate why, suddenly and profoundly sorry for them.

Lovino bows in her direction and says, "Speaking for my own press service, I know that the Princess' faith will not be…unjustified."

"It makes me really happy," To see you again, she thinks but cannot say, so she says something else. "To hear you say that."

The next reporter speaks up then, and asks her which city in her tour she enjoyed most. Her aides, the Ambassador, and the Countess rush to her side then, reminding her to treat every city on the tour equally, lest it be a reason for political upheaval; the Countess whispers what she should say, and she follows…well, not entirely, though.

"Each in its own way was unforgettable. It would be difficult to..." _Compare any of them in any way,_she was supposed to say, but she saw that little flash of recognition dawn in Lovino's eyes when he recognized that little hairclip – the one he slipped on her bangs yesterday when they kept falling in her eyes while she ate – clipped on her hair. "Rome, by all means, Rome." The aides gasp, the Ambassador runs a palm through her face; the reporters continue taking notes, Lovino beams, and all Maria thinks is: political upheaval be damned. "I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live."

* * *

><p>It is Gisela's turn to take pictures then, and the Belgian twists a little hidden knob on her oversized glasses, showing the Princess about how it is actually a secret camera, and Maria says that isn't it lovely, and the older blonde hands her a package, the little package Lovino had hidden from Mister Kirkland just a few hours ago.<p>

"Commemorative pictures, _princesa_." She says, just as Princess Maria's smile softens upon seeing the print of the agent whose head suffered a terrible injury because of her and the poor bottle, her arms encircled around Lovino's waist while riding the Vespa, and the adorable, not-life threatening encounter with the Mouth of Truth. "So that the Eternal City will stay forever in your memory." In other words: _your secret's safe with us, 'Bella'_.

"Thank you very much, Miss Gisela." She smiles regally, and shakes the older girl's hand, as if they hadn't met yesterday, as if they didn't have lunch together and taste each other's food. She moves on to the next reporter, her face not showing how happy she is to see him again.

"Your Highness, I am honored to finally be able to meet you," he says, effectively hiding the pain in his voice from a normal onlooker, but Gisela could sense it there, and she applauds him for that. Lovino extends a hand to her, and it takes every ounce of willpower in his bones to keep him from extending out the other one and taking Maria in his arms.

She shakes his hand, and the warmth stays in his palms as she addresses him without letting go just yet. "I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Vargas." She squeezes his hand, just a bit, and smiles, moving on to the next man, with a smile so beautiful it broke his heart.

Lovino couldn't stop thinking about what might have been. What might have happened, he mused, if she ran away with him and they spent the rest of their lives together? But it was no use, he knew, for him to think such things. She chose her path, and all he could do now was trudge on his.

Princess Maria looks upon the reporters one last time, and smiles. But Lovino could see that smile shifting into a smile so beatific that he knew it wasn't the one she offered reporters – no, it was the smile she had for him and him alone, that smile she had on after when he first kissed her. Her chocolate brown eyes held his own eyes in a gaze that made his heart stop. After a few moments, after her eyes finally began to glisten with relief and longing and love, she turned away, away from the cameras, away from the Eternal City, away from him.

He walks away from her too, not looking back, but not forgetting anything, either. He looks back one last time, after traveling a distance away, and spots the hem of her skirt disappearing behind the regal doorframe.

He also remembers that little, private message her eyes told Lovino when they looked into each other's eyes for the last time, and it made him smile, despite everything.

_I will never forget you._

Well, neither would he.

* * *

><p>END.<p>

* * *

><p>Fan-made names used: MariaBella (OC!Philippines), Anh Linh/Anna (Vietnam), Gisela (Belgium), Alejandro (OC!Mexico), Romana (fem!Romano), Chiara (fem!Italia)

**A/N:** My _magnum opus_one year in the making. What would make me really happy is to see this done before the end of the year, because, well, I should stop putting it on the back burner, since it's too precious to resist. My story would be much better, though - I know it would - and here you could see what I wanted to write off in the distance, and darn, someone should write that story. Someone more worthy and eloquent than yours truly. orz

I've been drafting all this for months now, but I only got until the part when Princess Maria sleeps in Lovino's bed. All that followed after that just wrote itself when I got home from our batch's Christmas party. WTH, mind.

And like "Day By Day", my first lengthy AU fic, this also has a playlist. I just can't write something without music.

Super Girl (Mandarin Version) – Super Junior M (…because this story reminds me of the MV in reverse XD and I could so totally imagine Lovi singing these lyrics to win 'Ria over.)  
>Rocketeer – Far East Movement feat. Ryan Tedder (<em>close your eyes, come with me, there's a world out there that we should see…<em>)  
>Time Please Stop – Davichi (Of course Lovi would love for time to stop. They only get twenty-four hours to fall in love, after all.)<br>King of Anything – Sara Bareilles (For Papa Spain. Just because he's king doesn't mean he has all control over Piri! _ …well, actually it does.)  
>Misery – Maroon 5 (<em>girl, you've got me bad, you really got me bad…<em>)  
>Toxic – Local H (AKA the background of Brother Canada's calendar vid. I just like listening to this, there's no other reason why it's here XDDD But this fits. Somehow. In some way only my crack-addled brain could think of.)<br>Heartbeat – Enrique Iglesias feat. Nicole Scherzinger (_no matter what it is you think, I'm not the kind of girl to blink and give my heart away._)  
>She - (...you know, the song from the <em>Notting Hill<em>soundtrack? I had serious cases of LSSing on it while writing this, up to now I still have no idea why...)

Reviews are lovingly appreciated! ^^


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